“It’s not nothing to call a play and a tragic hero after your son – it speaks volumes,” Maggie O’Farrell told The Guardian in 2020, the year she published Hamnet. “We may not quite know what the volumes are – but it’s a huge act.” Having sold more than two million copies worldwide, O’Farrell’s novel has fascinated readers across the globe with its deep dive into the life and loves of Britain’s most prolific playwright: William Shakespeare. 

Now transformed into a film by award-winning director Chloé Zhao, and starring Irish actors Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley (who scooped a gong for her role as Agnes Hathaway at the Critics Choice Awards last weekend), Hamnet lands in cinemas today (9 January 2026) promising to be a must-see for film and literature buffs alike. Set away from the bright lights of the Globe Theatre, and instead honing in on The Bard’s home life with his wife and children, O’Farrell’s lauded story fills in the many gaps history couldn’t. 

While it’s important to note Hamnet – both on screen and paper – is fiction, that doesn’t mean there’s not some truth in it. Here, we’ve separated the fact from the fiction that informed the story of not only Hamnet, but Hamlet too. 

Who is Agnes Hathaway? 

Jessie Buckley as Agnes Hathaway

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in Hamnet (2026)

As far as history books are concerned, Agnes Hathaway – also known as Anne, about which O’Farrell quipped on podcast Shakespeare Unlimited in 2020: “Have we been calling her the wrong name for 400 years? It seemed to kind of really typify attitudes towards her. I wanted to give this name back to her, so in my book she’s Agnes” – is definitely a real person. 

She married Shakespeare when she was 26 and he was 18, and was three months pregnant with their daughter, Susanna, at the time of their nuptials. There are few records of Agnes’ life, but it’s believed she grew up in Shottery, a village just to the west of Stratford-upon-Avon, and remained living in the town while her husband lived and worked in London. 

Because of their unique living situation, and Shakespeare’s failure to mention her in his writing, there is much speculation that the marriage was an unhappy one. However, given there is no concrete evidence of this, and Shakespeare chose to move back to his wife when he retired in 1613 instead of immersing himself in the happenings of the Globe, this doesn’t seem to be true. 

Given the lack of historical records of Agnes – and her occupation and family – much of Hamnet’s depiction of her is purely from O’Farrell’s imagination. Written as a woman with supernatural abilities, herbal skills and who loves being at one with nature, O’Farrell justified portraying her as a seer and mystic healer by explaining,: “Why did she choose this penniless, wage-less 18-year-old? I thought, ‘Well, maybe she saw something in him. Maybe she looked at him and realised he was extraordinary, that he was a genius, that he was peerless in that sense […] so I suppose that that’s where this kind of grew from; that maybe she was the one person who could see into his soul and see what he was capable of.”

Who were William and Agnes Shakespeare’s children? 

Historical records show Shakespeare’s eldest daughter, Susanna, was born in 1583 and her twin siblings, Judith and Hamnet, were born two years later. In Hamnet, it is Judith who first contracts the bubonic plague in 1596 when buying a box of Italian beads from a market in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The disease was rife at the time but this fact hasn’t been confirmed by historians. Judith recovers, but Hamnet contracts the plague and dies soon after, aged just 11. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford in August 1596 – with the only historical records of him being his birth and death. 

“His death was always wrapped up in statistics about child mortality in the 16^th century,” O’Farrell told Shakespeare Unlimited. “Almost as if the unspoken implication was that it wouldn’t really have been that big a deal because they probably should have been half-expecting their children to die. That really, really got to me; that assumption. It’s such a presumptuous ascertain to make.”

What is Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet about? 

Hamnet is a vivid portrayal of a mother’s grief – exacerbated by the fact that, throughout the story, people come to Agnes for healing and medicine but she feels like she’s failed by not saving her son. 

A poignant excerpt from Hamnet reads: “Inside Agnes’s head, her thoughts are widening out, then narrowing down, widening, narrowing, over and over again. She thinks, This cannot happen, it cannot, how will we live, what will we do, what will I tell people, how can we continue, what should I have done, where is my husband, what will he say, how could I have saved him, why didn’t I save him, why didn’t I realize it was he who was in danger? And then, the focus narrows, and she thinks: He is dead. He is dead. He is dead.

“The three words contain no sense for her. She cannot bend her mind to their meaning. It is an impossible idea that her son, her child, her boy, the healthiest and most robust of her children, should, within days sicken and die.”

Interestingly, the novel never mentions Shakespeare by name and instead refers to him as ‘“husband’” or ‘“father’”. O’Farrell explains: “Let’s see him before he was the man, the icon, the behemoth that we all know. Just think of him as a man, you know. As a boy of 18 who gets his girlfriend pregnant.”

O’Farrell adds: “Obviously – and for very good reason – biographies focus on Shakespeare’s life in London, his career. But, for me, I’ve always thought that the biggest tragedy, the biggest drama of his life – of Shakespeare’s life – happened off stage in Stratford, at home. That was with the death of his son. The book was always going to be a kind of memorial to this boy and wanting to say, ‘This was really important. He was very important.’”

Did Hamnet’s death inspire Shakespeare to write Hamlet?

“You only have to read the first act of the play to know that it’s underpinned by this enormous weight of grief,” says O’Farrell. While there’s no concrete evidence to suggest Hamlet was prompted by the death of Hamnet, there are too many hints for it to be a coincidence. Firstly, the names would have been interchangeable at the time; secondly, Hamlet’s profound themes of grief, loss and complex father-son relationships certainly lend themselves to the real story; and thirdly, Shakespeare penned the play when he would have been grappling with his son’s loss, around 1599. 

Not only do scholars believe Hamnet’s story inspired Shakespeare’s second longest play, but that references to his son also featured in two other famous plays: Twelfth Night and King John. The former’s central plot follows separated twins, one of whom is presumed dead, who are eventually reunited in a happy ending, while the latter’s depiction of Constance’s grief after she loses her son could be a potential reflection of Shakespeare's own personal sorrow. 

“I don’t think without his death we would have the play Hamlet, and I don’t think we would have the play Twelfth Night,” explains O’Farrell. “Culturally, he is crucial, and I think emotionally he is crucial. It must have been a huge turning point in Shakespeare’s life and in the whole family’s life. I wanted the death to come in the middle of the book and for the second part afterwards, to [...] reflect how the family must have felt. They must have all broken into pieces, and I wanted the way the book was written to reflect that.” Pass us the tissues. 

Hamnet is in UK cinemas from 9 January 2026. 

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